Barry Maughan, former chief of English to Africa Service for the Voice of America and the author of Beneath the African Sun (Outback, 2025), shares stories of his journey through Africa and beyond.
In this episode of Moving Along, host Christi Cassidy interviews Barry Maughan, a former chief of English to Africa for the Voice of America and the author of Beneath the African Sun (Outback, 2025). Barry shares his memoir and travelogue of living in Ethiopia during the early 1970s and his extensive journey with his wife, Suzanne, from Egypt to South Africa in a VW Combi camper bus named Bridget. The discussion also delves into his nearly 25-year career in Washington, D.C., his childhood in Australia, and the serendipitous events that shaped his life and travels. They explore the power of serendipity, the importance of embracing opportunities, and the value of travel (especially for children) in broadening one's perspective. Barry reflects on his significant journalistic experiences, including covering the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie and the devastating famine in Ethiopia, and his heartfelt insights on race, class and the role of family in African cultures. The conversation further touches on the vital role of the Voice of America in Africa and his concerns about its recent dismantling.
Bio
Barry Maughan is a lifelong writer and was an international broadcaster and journalist for more than forty years. During that time, he plied his trade on four continents, including stops in Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the United States. His major news coverages included the coup that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in September 1974, and the devastating drought and subsequent famine in Ethiopia’s northern province of Wollo. The last 24 years of his career were spent at the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., where he retired as chief of the English to Africa service. Since his retirement, Barry has kept busy writing about his extensive travels and life experiences. Find out more and contact Barry: https://barrymaughan.com
00:36 Introduction to Barry Maughan
01:46 Barry's Early Life and Love for Travel
08:07 The Serendipitous Meeting in Egypt
10:01 Exploring Egypt and Heading South
17:40 Life and Work in Ethiopia
23:35 Challenges and Adventures in Africa
28:35 Navigating Language Barriers in Ethiopia
28:56 The Petrol Station Dilemma
31:03 Travel Adventures in Kenya
32:43 Cultural Insights and Family Values in Africa
39:34 The Voice of America
Moving Along - ep. 27 - Barry Maughan
[00:00:00]
Christi Cassidy: Welcome to Moving Along. My guest today is Barry Maughan. He is the former chief of English to Africa for the Voice of America, and author most recently of the book Beneath the African Sun, published in 2025 by Outback Publishing. The book is a memoir and travelogue of his time in the early 1970s living in Ethiopia when he and his wife at the time, Suzanne drove in a VW Combi camper bus, the length of Africa from Egypt to South Africa.
Today we're going to talk about that trip and his experience as a journalist and radio broadcaster in Addas Ababa, Ethiopia, and then for nearly 25 years in Washington DC with Voice of America working in the English to Africa division. [00:01:00] Welcome, Barry.
Barry Maughan: Well, welcome to you, Christi Thank you for having me on your podcast.
Christi Cassidy: Thank you for being here.
Christi Cassidy: Barry, you were born near Brisbane. Grew up in Australia, what did travel and moving mean to you as a child?
Barry Maughan: I think it was ingrained in me, Christi, because my mom and my dad both loved to travel. They traveled throughout the outback during the depression days. dad was a pianist and my mom was, as we say in Australia, the spruiker. She was the one who had, was a good talker and probably got it from her. she was the one who would get her foot in the door because back in those days my dad as a piano tuner was not in great high demand, especially you know, when people maybe didn't have enough money to put food on the [00:02:00] table. So getting their piano tuned. Was not the highest priority. But my mom went in and talked him up and my dad, very meek and mild would sit in the car until he got the message from my mom. And in, he'd come with his tuning fork, very adept at that. And he would tune their piano and that's how they made their living for many, many years. So they traveled in various parts of Australia. And I think that was ingrained in me from the very, very beginning because that's how they had to make their living. I became enjoyed with with traveling because love traveling around Australia even as a, as a youngster. And just was curious about lay over the next hill, other people lived like, was something that always fascinated me throughout my life I always wanted to go and meet new [00:03:00] people. And when I got the serendipitous opportunity to travel throughout Africa, I jumped at it because it was something that I'd always dreamed of doing.
Christi Cassidy: Before you got to Africa though, you somehow got from Australia to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Is that where you met Suzanne?
Barry Maughan: yes, yes. There was a, divorce and my mom left Australia and took me with her, obviously, and headed to Canada. Because it was much easier to get into Canada because they were both commonwealth countries. Then a marriage of convenience happened and she married and came to live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I then grew up in Portsmouth and. Didn't study for the All I wanted that was the college entrance examinations. All I wanted to do was be a disc jockey and travel around. And, but I [00:04:00] couldn't get into university. So I went to Cambridge School of Radio and Television broadcasting and, Graduated there in one year and went to work for dawn to dusk 250 Watts stations, which is a great way to learn the broadcasting business as I tell every aspiring broadcaster. 'cause you learn it all, you learn to rip and read news network do disc jockey shows rip and remotes do, tower soundings, everything. Then I realized that working for back then, a dollar 25 an hour just wasn't gonna cut it. Especially when the hours they gave you made it seem like it was like 40 or cents an hour. So I went nights and summers to Boston University and graduated there in four years and got a a B.A. in journalism advertising. then subsequently a MS from [00:05:00] Oklahoma State University in journalism management. Then bunch of old jobs that I really didn't enjoy, ended up being national media buyer for Crest Toothpaste and Honeycomb cereals and whatever with Benton & Bowles advertising in New York.
And that wasn't proving satisfactory nor was the job that my wife had at the time. And so she had the idea, Hey, why don't we just get outta here and we don't have children as yet, and let's go to Europe and, and buy a Combi bus and tour around and have fun, and then we'll maybe come back to the US or think of something else to do.
So the wonderlust was already there. We both had sand in our shoes and we, loved the idea of that. Anyway, that's how the first part of it Africa was not in our plans, but. We were traveling around Europe for a while [00:06:00] and it got to be cold and we said, Hmm, maybe Portugal or Spain. Well, we think about what we want to do next 'cause it's warmer down there. Someone said, nah, why don't you go to Morocco? Ooh, good idea. You know, go straight to Morocco head on down to Morocco for the winter and then come back to Europe. Let's just take a trip around the Mediterranean littoral first. So we found a a steamer that would or cruise liner that would take us on that journey and would take Bridget, our Combi bus along for the ride. we did that stopping in ports like Barcelona, Genoa, Naples and finally Alexandria. And got off in Alexandria and decided, okay, well why don't we just drive across the North African littoral to Morocco, we were camped in Alexandria had all the necessary documents for ourselves and Bridget, the carnet de passage that was necessary [00:07:00] to import a car into, or any sort of vehicle into countries that we went through. And lo and behold, the day before we were ready to head west into Libya a chap by the name of Muammar Gaddafi and his men launched a coup against King Idris. And that was the end of that. then we had to kind of pivot.
Christi Cassidy: You talk a lot about serendipity in this book Lady Luck was with you, it seems the whole way.
Christi Cassidy: While you were on that freighter coming toward Alexandria, toward Egypt, you met somebody, right? that was a big part of how your plans changed?
Barry Maughan: The, the largest serendipity. If I hadn't met Ibrahim el Tahawi not knowing who he was at the time I don't think we would have done what we did in Africa. Even though I had longed to see the continent I don't think it would've transpired the way it did. Turns out I'll [00:08:00] talk to anyone who stands still for a moment and a lot of time on a cruise. And just struck up a conversation with this Egyptian general. And as I say to folks not disparagingly that in generals are a dime a dozen in that area of the world. So I didn't know him from Adam, as they say. but we enjoyed each other's company. I noted that he was always surrounded by these military types, but didn't think anything of it. We met one time and said goodbyes. And the next day one of his lieutenants came up to me and said oh General el Tahawi would like the pleasure of your company for dinner, you and your wife, and you meet his wife and da da da.
Oh, fine. Okay. So we did that, and at the end, he handed me his card and he said, well, if you're ever in Cairo, well look me up. And I thought, yeah, that's the way a lot of people just end the conversation, you know, very politely and thought nothing of it. [00:09:00] And so he went his way and I went our way. And but when Colonel Gaddafi did what he did, said, Hmm, well we're here now. what do we do? Do we turn tail and go back to Europe? Because that's how we would've felt defeatism or, well, we're here now. Why don't we just go down to Cairo
Barry Maughan: Look at the pyramids and, and the rest, and, and we can decide, we'll probably come back up to Alexandria and head on back, but at least we will have seen the pyramids. So we did that and couldn't find a place to park in in Cairo for Bridget that we were staying with friends there for a little bit. And I said, well, you know, I have this card. Why don't I just you know, show up at his offices and the Young Men's Muslim Association? I said, probably like YMCA, you know. Okay, I get to this high-rise building in this palatial [00:10:00] office offices, and one of his assistants takes my card and I'm expecting, oh, come back in two or three days and he maybe give you five minutes. And, Lo and behold he shows the card and I ushered in and. Mr. Barry, how you doing? And I'd like you to meet some of my friends.
Here's Mahmoud Fawzi, who just happened to be the Minister of War. Then I met the Minister of Health and yadda yadda. Half the Egyptian cabinet was sitting around just having, just having a good old time, just over drinks and snacks and come on over and join us. And I said, oh my goodness, I'm gonna be talking politics and economics. well, what do you like about Egypt? What would you ever like to see? Oh, and, and what's your impressions today? And so I gave him the Sphinx and the Pyramids and the Cairo Museum and, you know, the usual, Oh, that's great. Picks up the [00:11:00] phone and he's talking in Arabic and I don't know what he's saying.
Well, about two minutes later in comes Lieutenant Basry, oh, introduce, and he says, now. The next 10 days he's gonna be your guide he's going to pick you up each day in air conditioned limousine. And you're gonna do everything you ever wanted, huh? Really? I have one little problem. We have no place to stay Oh, no worries. Well, there's a, a, a series of islands in the Nile on one is the Gezira Club. He says, up here, here's some keys. You'll have exclusive domain of the the bathroom facilities, and it'll be a safe place for your camper bus. And so that's where Lieutenant Basry's gonna pick you up each morning at eight o'clock.
You be ready and you just tell him what you'd like to do. So it was like a magical carpet ride as I write in the book. [00:12:00] And we just saw everything ever wanted. And yes, the Pyramids and the, Sphinx and, and the Cairo Museum didn't see them at their their best at the Cairo Museum because this was during the War of Attrition with Israel. And so there was a lot of sandbags around and the tapes on the windows. And we didn't get to see the King Tut Museum because that had been moved to safer quarters. Even though they were pretty sure that the Israelis would not bomb the Cairo Museum. But we got to see other things. We got to go to restaurants and eat all kinds of exotic food. But I think the one thing that stood out, and it was the, this beautiful opera house where Aida had been first performed in the 1890s. And, We saw an Egyptian play and it was a, a fabulous experience because here in the West, when we like something, obviously we clap. Well, there they clap. But if they're really [00:13:00] moved by part of the performance, the room would, ring to Allah, Allah and that was their way of really showing appreciation and. We just came away with a, a greater appreciation of not just the superficialities of, Egypt and its people, but just a deeper understanding of of the country and the culture. And I visited with Ibrahim for, many, many years after that. Every time my assignments took me to Cairo and got to be fast friends visiting him in his home and in his apartments and whatever. And I was truly moved when I heard that he had had passed because we had become very good friends and we never talked, politics, never talked anything else except sports. He liked one club. Of soccer club football. And I said, well, I like Zamalek because they're the, the rivals. [00:14:00] And we just had a wonderful, wonderful time. And it all started circling back to what you said, Christi, about just a serendipitous meeting. And it's, it's crazy how those things happen. But I would just say this, you have to embrace, you can't be afraid of embracing and just taking serendipities as they come and appreciating them and not being afraid.
Christi Cassidy: so you see serendipity as opportunity.
Barry Maughan: Yes. Yes, definitely. I mean, one has to be cautious. You know, your intuitive nature has to come into play. But and I am highly intuitive and so I, I always felt like this was an all right chap. He was, he was good. He never asked me for anything. All he wanted to do was give, give, give, give, give.
And it proved to be the case.
Christi Cassidy: Wow. So what [00:15:00] encouraged you to keep heading south rather than turning back to Alexandria and going back to Western Europe?
Barry Maughan: Well, again, Ibrahim el Tahawi. we had said, well, we have some friends in Addis Ababa, but we really don't know how to get there if we can do it physically. He said, well, I'll get you as far as Aswan. Which was 500 miles up the Nile in the southern part of Egypt. So he gave us first class train tickets.
He said, the only thing I cannot do is I cannot have Bridget travel with you. So, but I will put her on a rail car, a flat car, and I will put an armed guard, make sure that she arrives in one piece. And so you go on to Aswan, have a good time there, look around and just check the rail yards every day.
And one day she'll come sailing in and one [00:16:00] day she did. There it was. And, and by that time we had explored Aswan and the surrounding areas and had a great old time. And so we felt, well, part is over. In for, a penny, in for a pound as my late mum used to say. So we got to Aswan and but that was all Ibrahim el Tahawi then we felt like, oh, birds suddenly tossed outta the nest because now we were on our own and almost like, no, we turned around. Now let's just continue by hook or by crook to get down to Addis Ababa.
Christi Cassidy: And you had friends there from the States or from
Barry Maughan: College friends of mine who was with an NGO in Addis and he said, Hey, you know, when you're ever in the neighborhood, come and visit us. And they were true to their word when we got to Addis. We were able to [00:17:00] stay with them for a while until we got ourselves grounded.
Christi Cassidy: That's great. And you stayed there.
Christi Cassidy: You worked for Radio Voice of the Gospel, right? A Lutheran broadcaster and you recount some pretty big stories that you covered in the years that you were there. The fall of Haile Selassie
Barry Maughan: yes. I must say again, serendipity. I'm driving on the outskirts of Addis and I hear this radio station. I'm a journalist that's a radio station. Hey, and I must give credit now to my late boss to Ken Stewart, who just hired me right off the street. I showed up and said, Hey, I'm a journalist.
Hey. Okay. There you go. your shift is tomorrow and go do it, which I did. And so I give all the credit to to the late Ken Stewart. Some of the stories the main one has to be, the coup that eventually toppled [00:18:00]Emperor Haile Selassie. I was there one of only four or five journalists, international journalists who got to cover the story from start to finish. I worked for such outlets as the Financial Times, UPI Voice of America, of course, New Zealand Broadcasting. I was what they called a stringer. You only get paid for the work that you that is used. But the emperor had this larger than life demeanor and reputation. And so unfortunately. In other African cases, it's only when there's blood in the street or a natural disaster that people are interested. Then they're only interested for a little while where there, there was a great interest in the emperor and especially when they felt like there was something going on that would ultimately seize power from him. So I was able to bring that to my listeners and to the [00:19:00] readers for about two or three years. While that story unraveled and the book will detail a lot of the the ins and outs of that but as long as I must say this, as long as you've followed the rules, I state in the book they, you always treat it with deference. The only people that really get into trouble in Africa is the ones who try to pull rank or don't follow the rules. I always felt like if I had the proper documentations and I followed the rules and did as instructed, and you, you were generally all right.
And then the other one very tragic was the the drought and subsequent famine in the province of Wollo, about 300 miles north of Addis Ababa, where literally hundreds of thousands of people died. And my way up there with one of the aid agencies, I was able to witness and record that and pass that along [00:20:00] to the world. and of course took that that one photo that was, very wrenching where I woman tried to give me her baby and after telling me that she had no more milk in her breasts. And I instinctively took the baby only to be told by my handler, my interpreter that I would be arrested if I tried to keep the baby. And I had to give it back after, handing the woman some, some money. And only to find out the next day that the child had died. I was, I had taken a picture, not for self gratification, but to try and add pictorial account of what was going on there. as they say nowadays, it went viral and was picked up by the news agencies. And I would like to think in my own small way that I led the way to, television getting in there and then really blowing the lid off [00:21:00] the, the story. Jonathan Dimbleby of the BBC is one of the first, and it was through his efforts that the world got to see what was going on in Wollo.
And of course aid was able to flow in more, more freely because the emperor heretofore, had kind of stymied aid going up there because the emperor's Ethiopia was the Garden of Eden. Nothing bad ever happened there, in fact it, it had and would but when television was added to the mix of coverage, then the emperor had had to bow to the international pressure and allow a lot more aid in. So
Christi Cassidy: Mm-hmm.
Barry Maughan: major stories, A lot of other minor ones. But stories of made my, my career i'm ever grateful to people again, the serendipity serendipitous, serendipitous event that led me to [00:22:00] ask Ken Stewart for the, for the job, and he's saying yes and just taking it from there.
So another case of serendipity.
Christi Cassidy: do you believe in fate?
Barry Maughan: Yes. I, I believe that you have to, you have to make the, the, the most of, of fate, I also believe that some things are maybe preordained, but you also have to make your own way in this world. And I'm a a people person and I think that that's always held me in, in good stead my former wife the logical one. It was a combination of our talents that that got us through a lot of situations.
And then after Addis Ababa on our trip down to South Africa was our 1-year-old son, Kevin being towhead and blond. He opened a lot of doors and through his just his curiosity and and just never fearing the unknown that we were a great combination.
Christi Cassidy: I [00:23:00] think somewhere in the book you said toward the end you gave a little advice to people who want to go to Africa and say, don't try to bend Africa to your will.
Barry Maughan: Yes.
Christi Cassidy: like you saw some of that.
Barry Maughan: It will break you. We saw people, you gotta be prepared and people who did not take Africa seriously enough. So at their own peril we saw people literally stuffing tires with grass and whatever because went in with tires that were not up to the task. We had engine failures, wrong kinds of vehicles, all kinds of things. They started out with the best intentions, but the continent is harsh. The people are wonderful, but the continent is harsh. You gotta have all the equipment, you gotta carry it with you. You gotta carry extra [00:24:00] tires, extra hot, and. patch kits, you've got to have extra jacks, you've got to have tow ropes and whatever, invariably you'll need them some not very often, but when you do need them, you need them. So if, if you're not prepared and and you're not willing to meet people in the proper spirit, then either you're not gonna make it or you make it a lot harder on yourself. I must say we never encountered any really dire situations. There was some that we had to be careful about, like going into Uganda during the the regime of Idi Amin crossing the border there.
We gave our passports to the, of course, the border official, I could see that he was holding the passports upside down. So that [00:25:00] meant, you know, he was scrutinizing them and going page to page. But, you know, obviously he couldn't read. Well, my wife started to chuckle and I kind of gave her a nudge and told her to keep quiet. And he looked and he looked and he looked and he finally put the stamps in. Of course, the stamps are upside down, but you never want to mock or make fun or otherwise look down on, on, on, on people. Because they have the power. Always understand that when you're crossing borders there, they had the power to either let you in or, and or not.
So as, we made our way south, we learned that lesson over and over and over again, and got ingrained in us. So we didn't even have to think twice about, you know, not doing something. We just realized that this was the best way to do it
Circling back to what you said, Christi, is you [00:26:00] know, people ask me, well, would you do it today? Hmm. And for the main reason, no, I wouldn't do it today because it wouldn't be quite as adventurous. And this is nothing to do with people going safaris and all that. No, no. cocoons, if I, as I call it, we didn't have any, all the electronic tethers that you've got
Christi Cassidy: Yeah.
Barry Maughan: have the SAT phones. You've got the GPS, you, you've got the cell phones, you know, and there's been a couple of times that people have asked me, well, why didn't you take the picture of, you know, that Dinka lady holding your baby? And, and Suzanne holding the Dinka baby. Well, when you got an single lens reflex camera and you got the F stops and you got all this, it would've broken the moment. I couldn't surreptitiously pull out my cell phone and, and not broken the moment. So was more of an adventure. would I people to go on these safaris and all? [00:27:00] Yeah, it's great. See the animals and, and the local culture. Yeah. But if you are planning an, an overland trip, one end to the end, to the other, yeah, if you want to do that, but don't expect it to be as adventurous as we found it. Back in the early seventies.
That doesn't make us any better than them. It's just mean. We did what we did with what we had. Would I have
liked a a s Satphone or all that? It, it was generally a case of, okay looking at the sun, my wife being the intelligent one, looking up at the sun and saying, yeah, we're heading south. Okay. Or at your peril asking one of the locals, because one penchant of Africans is they always want to tell you what they think You wanna know, are we going in the right direction?
Barry Maughan: Oh, yes, [00:28:00] Mista. Yes. Yes. didn't, they knew you wanted the right answer and they wanted to give it to you the correct.
So they just told you there was no malice involved. a lot of times it was you left to your own devices and luckily we always seemed to guess correctly.
Christi Cassidy: you have a great story in there about. Traveling with some friends and needing petrol, getting to a petrol station, gas station, and there's no gas. And the attendant telling you, nege, is that how you say it?
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow.
Barry Maughan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we had fair, they were new to Ethiopia they hadn't lived there, you know, for three years like we had. And so we got to know a little bit not only the language. But the, the Machiavellian aspects of [00:29:00] the language, again, going back to they want to tell you what they think you want to know, okay, we get to Moyale and pull up for gas and, you know, we're on fumes. And okay. With my kitchen, Amharic, I find out that oh yes, Mista, The gas benzene as they call it, benzene be here, nege. So they turned to me and say, what does nege mean? I said, well, literally it means tomorrow, but it also can mean in a week, a year. It has that indefinite quality to it. Ah, nege.
It's good Tomorrow. Tomorrow. So said to my wife, I said, okay, let's just go by nege for the next couple of days. But if nege hasn't arrived by then, I think we need to do something about it. So by the time two days had rolled around, I had checked how much gasoline we had [00:30:00] I knew that we were going to make it the a hundred and something miles to Marsabit, Kenya on fumes. gonna be very dicey. Okay, well two days come. nege, nege. I said, we're outta here silly. You are gonna, you're gonna run out of petrol or benzene or gas, whatever you wanna call it. On your way to Marsabit, we're gonna pass you 'cause we're gonna arrive tomorrow and boom.
Barry Maughan: Anyway cut a long story short, we got to Marsabit on fumes. And put more gas in Bridget than we ever had before. And went down to across the Nairobi and Mombasa on the coast, coastal city, and up to the beautiful Kenyan coast. Malindi. Took a couple of days on Lamu, a beautiful island, offshore island. Came back to Malindi, had the best fish I've ever had in my life. [00:31:00] Parrot fish anyway, and back to Mombasa and up to Nairobi. And lo and behold, there'd been two Germans on BMW motorcycles had been traveling with us and just happened to run into 'em doing exchange greetings and other that. And then it said, Hey where you been? We told them, and I said, well, hey, what have you been up to? We just arrived today. Well nege in this case, it turned out to be about three weeks.
Christi Cassidy: Oh, three weeks.
Barry Maughan: all that and they, they sat there for three weeks and as I write in the book, I didn't have to say anything. I didn't have to rub their nose in it. They learned, forever, what nege really means.
Christi Cassidy: Yep.
Barry Maughan: So, yeah, interesting story. Learn and you, and that's the thing. You, you have to learn from past experience and when to do [00:32:00] something, when not to do something. And if you do something stupid, then you pay the price.
Christi Cassidy: How, how did your perceptions of race and class change, if at all, during your time in Africa?
Barry Maughan: Very good question. Christi changed it a lot. Because I realized in dealing with people, me give you a story. We're in the outback of Ethiopia. And I just happened to have someone who could translate because we were, we met this family living in a little tufah, which is a little round thatched house sat down with them. And as I've mentioned in the book, most people that we met in that regard give you half of what they don't have. Wonderful people. [00:33:00] And we sat there and we talked not about geopolitics, about anything. We talked about life their hopes and aspirations and you know, the same as ours. They wanted three square meals on the table for their children. They want better lives for their children than they had had. And they wanted as little government interference in their life as possible, and they didn't want their children. Going off and possibly dying in some foreign war. Duh. know, it showed me the, the humanity, the oneness of humanity. No matter where we traveled in the world, whether it be Thailand, India, Australia, Africa, Europe, it didn't matter.
South America, wherever we happened to be, there was this oneness for man's [00:34:00] humanity. And, and what, what they really want. When it gets right down to it, politics aside, that's what most people want. And I've just realized that in Africa, family is so, so important in tangible ways. There's one ethnic group in, called the Ik IK. And. How they venerate the elderly. Okay. When their children are born, they take care of them. Then as they get older and the children have children, then their grandchildren, they take care of the grandchildren. And then as they get more elderly, they are taken care of very carefully. Then one day when the time is theirs, [00:35:00] they're allowed to walk out onto the desert and die on their own terms, and then they go out and they bring back the body and they venerate it according to their custom. And I was always struck by the super, super importance of family in the. African family structure, it's, it seems to be much stronger than we here in the United States. And that's the only thing I can really compare it with. Whereas sometimes you find that people will stick the older, the elderly in, in beautiful homes like birds in gilded cages. No one visits them and yet, and they're just left there to to die. That's not the way they were always, even in the [00:36:00] Ik tradition, they were given little tasks to do to, according to their abilities, always made to feel helpful to the commonweal. And I found this not just in Ethiopia or Tanzania or Malawi, or. Whatever. Everywhere I went, it was, it was this, this embodiment of familial spirit and cooperation love and trust, and I just wish that this was replicated throughout the world. I learned a lot people I've met in Africa.
Christi Cassidy: You have a very moving chapter in here about how you perceive the value of travel to children and exposure to the wider world, to different cultures.
Barry Maughan: [00:37:00] Yes. Well, in a nutshell, truly believe if people, could or would travel more in their life and experience various cultures and peoples and traditions we'd have, far few have troubles in our world, and I think my children benefited. From this, from not just traveling throughout Africa, but Thailand and Australia, New Zealand where I worked they've been to Europe and whatever. Because let me give you an example. Always try to give an example. Kevin is my son who was one during the travel but now is in his mid fifties, is an IT director he had to go to India to open up a branch office. And he arrived in the city with a staff, you know, four or five other [00:38:00] people. because, he had been to India and had experienced life there, he was able to go to work right away. he knew the smells, knew the neverending noise, the cacaphony of it all the food, nothing was repellent to him. It took his staff three to four days they really got their feet under them. And this is to be expected because they had never, never traveled a lot and had never been to India. But he instinctively knew how to handle that because he had traveled. So yes, travel more, get to know other people, and I think a lot of the differences, the perceived differences can be overcome without a lot of people dying in the, in the process.
Christi Cassidy: I want to talk to you about Voice of [00:39:00] America, you worked there for a long time and I was hoping that you would be willing to talk about. How you perceive the value of Voice of America, and specifically what you did, which is English to Africa, and especially now that the Voice of America has been dismantled by the current administration.
Barry Maughan: Good, good question.
The rest of the world has gone forward when it comes to communications. The Voice of America, though, very, very powerful in those areas, has had to compete with these, uh, other mostly, uh, local stations, outlets, but that's not the case in Africa. Africa still relies on radio outside of the major metropolitan areas, and that's where the preponderance of people live.
So while I mourn the loss of the Voice of [00:40:00] America, you asked me to talk specifically about the branch that I headed up for. in my 25 years there, that's deeply, deeply disturbing to me because I knew the impact that we were having on the continent. There's always a lot of charges been thrown around about the being biased and whatever.
I can tell you, and I would say this to anyone, and I have told them. That did not go on in English to Africa. What I told everybody who came into the service, especially when I was in charge, is we all have biases. To the extent that it's possible, hang them up at the door and let's give. The people of Africa, [00:41:00] something that they do not get from the local media, and that's both sides of the story unbiased and give them the right to make up their own minds as we like to do in this country.
And that's what we assiduously tried to do. In English to Africa. We tried not just to ram politics and economics down their throat, but uh, we tried to entertain, we had wonderful music programs on African music American music. I did the, um, daily sports program in my spare time. For many, many years and then passed it on to, uh, another chap, Sonny Young, who did a magnificent job, grew it beyond my [00:42:00] comprehension.
And so we were, we were very, very much loved throughout the continent. And our position was only growing stronger because our main competitor. The, uh, BBC had cut back on its Africa service, so the field was wide open to us to give our message living assiduously up to the charter of the, the Voice of America to millions of listeners, north, south, east, west, living in Africa.
So I mourn deeply the opportunity to continue to do that, whether I was in charge or whomever, because our place is only gonna be taken [00:43:00] by others, the Russians, the Chinese, whatever, and their message is not gonna be the same as ours, at least what the English to Africa Branch of the Voice of America gave them.
So it's a, it's a, it's a very troubling subject for me, but when it comes right down to it, trying to place it into some sort of context that I can, I can live with is I did what I could do for 25 years, not just me, myself and the 20 odd people that worked with me. We did what we could do during that time.
Now the folks who carried on our legacy are not being given that opportunity, and that's very, very sad. But during our tenure, we lived up to the highest ideals of the Voice of America and what it was intended to do [00:44:00] to bring people together. Harmony understanding because the more we understand each other, then uh, the better off this world is gonna be.
And one of the hallmarks of really trusting the United States was, uh, when we gave blanket coverage both sides way, way back in the Watergate scandal. That would never happen in their countries. You see, and this, this gave us our, our bonafides. Oh, there's many, many other examples, but that's the one that comes to mind.
So we, we did the African continent proud while we broadcast to them, but I also realized that we could and should be doing so much more right now. And it's, it's sad when [00:45:00] sometimes if you're gonna make changes, don't do it with a hatchet, but do it with a scalpel. And if they had really, really looked at the impact that the Voice of America was making area to area, we'd still be broadcasting to Africa, because that's the continent that really needs.
The Voice of America because it has so few other outlets to give people the unbiased coverage that those people crave.
Christi Cassidy: So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing this.